New faces, $100,000 help transform John Evans’ reputation and how students are disciplined

Karena Malcom wanted her two seventh-grade daughters out of John Evans Middle School last year. She couldn’t pinpoint why exactly, but she worried about the safety in the school.

“I just didn’t feel like there was really a lot of control at the school last year,” she said.

She has had five children go through the school and has worked to transfer them out on a few occasions. This year, however, was the first time she was happy a transfer didn’t happen. She sees her daughters enjoying school, and they report there are less fights and students are happier.

“I’m very pleased and pleasantly surprised that the school could change like this so fast,” she said.

Malcom isn’t the only one seeing a change at John Evans. Parents and teachers say they are starting to see a shift in the school’s culture. They say the year is off to a fresh start with a new administration, and rules are enforced with more kids obeying.

Numbers are backing up the change that parents and teachers are seeing.

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The school’s accreditation score, which is based on school goals, academics and test scores, has almost doubled from last year. In 2003, the school scored a 27, meaning it was on academic watch, and the school wasn’t even accredited. This year, it scored a 50, which puts it in line with other middle schools.

“This school was ready to be a good school,” said Guy Newland, John Evans’ principal. “We just had to put a few things in place to help it get there.”

An extra $100,000 invested in the school this year by the district didn’t hurt either.

“I think the jump-start provided by the money was needed,” Newland said. “We could have made it without the money, but it might have been a slower process.”

Newland spent the extra money on the salaries of a second assistant principal, another security monitor to oversee an expanded in-school suspension program and a bilingual secretary. Teachers and parents say the extra administrators have more time for one-on-one contact with the students.

The school has a lot to overcome. It historically has some of the lowest test scores in district middle schools, and it led other middle schools in its number of expulsions in 2001, 2002 and 2003. Principal turnover has been a big problem as well, with Newland as the school’s fifth principal in eight years.

An estimated 240 families transferred kids out of the school from the fall of 2001 to 2003. Though the school is one of the largest middle schools in the district and can hold 1,000 students, it has about 800 students this year because many families opted to send their students somewhere else.

Newland has gone to all of the elementary schools that feed into John Evans to promote the school to parent organizations. He hopes that when parents start seeing the changes in the school, they will want to send their kids there.

He faces a tough battle this year. While the school is improving its safety record, the neighborhood around it is not. This year the school has been under lockdown twice — both incidents stemming from armed men in the neighborhood — and one murder happened close to the school about a month ago.

The neighborhood violence worries Malcom.

“I don’t know how a parent could not be concerned with all of that going on,” she said. “I do everything I can to make sure my girls aren’t outside the school without supervision.”

Inside the school, however, things are changing. The school has significantly fewer suspensions and expulsions this year than last, said John Gates head of safety and security for Greeley-Evans School District 6.

Last year, the school had 697 disciplinary incidents and now, three months into the year, the school has seen 154 incidents. Though he can’t compare the numbers to the same time last year, the low number of incidents this year show a big change, Gates said.

“Barring something really, really strange, the numbers will be way down,” he said.

Ann Lacefield, an 18-year veteran teacher of John Evans, hopes people don’t assume that the school is having a hard time because of what is happening in the neighborhood.

“Our halls are safe and happy,” she said. “I hope the people in our neighborhood surrounding the school start to work to reclaim the neighborhood. We’ve reclaimed ours.”

Last school year, John Evans had a total of 697 disciplinary incidents:

* 16 in-school suspensions

* 636 out-of-school suspensions

* 45 expulsions

Three months into the 2004-05 school year, the school has had 154 disciplinary incidents:

* 118 in-school suspensions

* 36 out-of-school suspensions

* 0 expulsions

Though no comparison was available for this same time last year, the numbers show that John Evans will have a substantial decrease in the number of incidents, said John Gates, head of safety and security for Greeley-Evans School District 6.